Life of Pi Summary

It is easy to see why Yann Martel's 2001 novel, Life of Pi, was widely praised and went on to become an international bestseller. Martel tells a story both striking and unique, the life story of Piscine Patel. When he was growing up in India as the son of a zookeeper, Piscine was teased unmercifully for his name, so he shortened it to Pi, as in the mathematical symbol π. This change of name is only the first of several fascinating changes Pi experiences. Some are more or less under his control, like his pursuit of truth by simultaneously studying Christianity Hinduism, and Islam. Some, like his father's decision to move the family to Canada, are not under Pi's control, especially when the ship carrying the Patel family sinks and Pi is stranded in a lifeboat with only a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a 450-pound tiger for company.

The bulk of this fascinating, colorful novel focuses on Pi's struggles to survive and to make sense of this dehumanizing condition in which he finds himself. Every setting, from India to the lifeboat and on to Mexico once Pi is rescued, is vividly rendered. Martel has an eye for vivid details and piles them on, making this novel a joy to read and supremely easy to imagine.

Video: Introduction

Life of Pi begins with an author’s note written by a character named Yann Martel. Martel confesses that his previous novel received poor reviews and faded into obscurity and he lost interest in writing another novel. Martel sought inspiration in India, where he met a strange old man who directed him to Piscine “Pi” Molitar Patel. Pi’s life story inspired Martel’s new novel.

Piscene grows up in Pondicherry, India, the son of a zoo keeper. Young Piscine suffers as a boy because of his name, which sounds very close to the word “pissing.” When Piscine changes schools, he takes the opportunity to rename himself “Pi” after the mathematical symbol, publically declaring his new name to all. With his new name, Pi enjoys a happy childhood, free from mockery, as he explores the zoo, makes many friends, and relishes life with his close-knit family.

An intelligent and deeply religious boy, Pi excels in the study of his native religion, Hinduism. Surprisingly, however, Pi explores two more of the world’s major religions—Islam and Christianity—when his family vacations in Munnar. With the help of a Muslim mystic named Satish Kumar and a parish priest named Father Martin, Pi becomes a devotee of both religions. As an old man, Pi will still practice the three faiths of Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity, making him a unique religious figure.

Pi’s life in India ends when his father sells the zoo and moves the family to Canada. The family embarks across the Pacific Ocean on the Japanese cargo ship Tsimtsum with a menagerie of zoo animals to be sold to North American zoos. Unfortunately, the Tsimtsum sinks, taking Pi’s family with it. Pi makes it safely onto a lifeboat, where, besides some vermin, his only companions are a zebra with a broken leg, a hyena, an orangutang, and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

At first, Pi does not see the tiger, so he lives in fear of the hyena. Since Pi paid such close attention to everything his father said about wild animals, he manages to survive the hyena’s predatory advances long enough to see it kill and eat the zebra and orangutang. Pi observes nature’s cruelty with horror, realizing that he will become the hyena’s next victim. Pi has virtually surrendered himself to the savage hyena when, suddenly, the tiger makes his presence known, easily destroying the hyena and saving Pi’s life.

Pi remains adrift on the Pacific Ocean with a tiger for 227 days. He struggles to survive and overcome his sudden orphaning, his new grief, seasickness, endless waves, relentless storms, starvation, thirst, blazing sun, desiccative salt water, skin sores, utter loneliness, and despair, as well as the aggressions of an infamous predator. The vegetarian boy finds himself eating fish and turtles raw; the frightened boy tames a tiger; the devout disciple of three religions grapples with his faith in God, discovering indomitable strength therein. Pi surprises himself with the depth of his resolve to live, overcoming all obstacles with his powerful will.

While adrift, Pi has two remarkable encounters: He discovers a new, carnivorous species of algae, and—after going temporarily blind—he runs into another survivor from the Tsimtsum, a Frenchman adrift in his own lifeboat who has also gone blind. The Frenchman attacks Pi intending to eat him. Before he can kill Pi, however, he is attacked and eaten by the tiger.

The novel ends with the transcript of an interview between Pi and two investigators, Mr. Okamoto and Mr. Chiba, who are trying to determine what caused the Tsimtsum to sink. The men refuse to believe the more fantastical parts of Pi’s story, such as Pi surviving 227 days on a lifeboat with a tiger or coincidentally running into the Frenchman. They demand that Pi tell them the real story of what happened, and he finally offers them an alternative version of his story.

Pi tells the investigators that the lifeboat held four human survivors: Pi, his mother, the French chef from the Tsimtsum, and a Japanese sailor with a broken leg. He claims that the Frenchman amputated the sailor’s leg when it became infected and used the leg as fishing bait. When the sailor died, the Frenchman butchered the body and, in addition to using it for bait, ate some. This horrified Pi and his mother so much that Pi’s mother periodically berated and attacked the chef for many days, until the chef killed her while Pi watched. Then, apparently consumed with grief and despair over killing Pi’s innocent mother, the chef allowed Pi to kill him in revenge.

The investigators appear satisfied with the second version of Pi’s story, though they are impressed with the parallels between the two versions. Pi points out that neither story helps them understand what caused the Tsimtsum to sink. Given that both stories are equally valid for the men’s purposes, Pi asks which version they prefer. The men prefer the first, more mysterious and unusual story, the one with the animals. Mr. Okamoto includes the first version in his official report.

Sources for Further Study

Boyagoda, Randy. “Faith, Fiction, Flotsam.” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life 131 (May, 2003): 69-72. Critical review of Life of Pi that appreciates the story’s power but argues that Martel’s scattered views on religion weaken the book.

Cloete, Elsie. “Tigers, Humans, and Animots.” Journal of Literary Studies 23, no. 3 (September, 2007): 314-333. Provides a complex analysis of the tiger’s role in the novel, drawing upon major theories in literary studies to examine the representation of relationships between humans and animals.

Dwyer, June. “Yann Martel’s Life of Pi and the Evolution of the Shipwreck Narrative.” Modern Language Studies 35, no. 2 (Fall, 2005): 9-21. Focuses on animal-human relations in the novel, comparing this work to other important works about animal-human relations such as The Black Stallion (1941).

Video: Summary (Critical Survey of Literature for Students)

Life of Pi is the story of Piscine Molitor Patel, also known as Pi, who at the age of sixteen survived for 227 days on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean. Pi’s story begins with an account of his childhood in Pondicherry India where his father is the head of the Pondicherry Zoo. Pi is a deeply spiritual person who, after learning the teachings of Hinduism Islam and Catholicism, creates his own spiritual practice from all three traditions. Pi is equally enthralled with science, influenced not only by his agnostic father but also by his biology teacher, a confirmed atheist. While Pi’s scientific and religious influences exclude one other and even while the different religions he embraces are also mutually exclusive, Pi himself is able to integrate these seemingly disparate systems of thought into his daily life.

In 1977, Pi’s family departs Pondicherry for Toronto to avoid the brewing civil unrest in India, taking many of the zoo animals with them aboard the Tsintsum, a Japanese cargo ship. The ship inexplicably sinks, and Pi finds himself alone in the Pacific Ocean in a 26-foot lifeboat with a crippled zebra, an orangutan, a hyena, and a male Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. No one else survives. Before the first week is up, the hyena has killed the zebra and the orangutan, and the tiger has killed the hyena. Pi is left alone on the raft with the potentially man-eating tiger.

After overcoming his initial shock, Pi uses the boat’s survival gear to preserve his life from both the elements and the tiger. He overcomes his lifelong vegetarianism to be able to kill fish and sea turtles barehanded, though he finds the ease with which killing comes to him disturbing. Pi spends his days fishing for food for Richard Parker—in an effort to preserve his own life from the tiger—and tending the freshwater stills. Pi and the tiger face rainstorms, sharks, the scorching sun, and starvation. They also encounter whales, dolphins,...

(The entire section is 638 words.)

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Chapter 1:Summary
This chapter shifts around a bit in time as Pi attempts to recover from his ordeal on the ocean, but it primarily focuses on his education after he arrives in North America. He finished high school, then attended the University of Toronto, where he studied both zoology and religious studies. His zoology thesis focused on the three-toed sloth.

Analysis
Pi's double major reflects his longstanding interest in the meaning of life. However, this interest is given particular emphasis by the memories of his ocean ordeal, which continually drift through his mind in this chapter. He is continually marked by what he suffered.

Chapter 12:Summary
The author discusses how much telling his story upsets Pi, and how spicy the food is that Pi serves.

Analysis
These unrelated details go together thematically; Pi has not "digested" the "spicy" story he lived through in the past, just as the author cannot in the present.

Chapters 13-14:Summary
These two brief chapters both discuss pack relations. Chapter 13 notes that an animal will attack primarily to protect its territory and that a trainer must gain a psychological edge over an animal by establishing territorial ownership before the animal does. Chapter 14 follows this by...

Chapters 22-24:Summary
Together these three chapters sum up Pi's confusion regarding the role of faith and meaning in the world. Chapter 22 briefly suggests that the atheist is closer to faith than the agnostic. Chapter 23 describes the time all of Pi's religious teachers met him at the same time, with his family, and had a nasty argument over which faith he followed and which was better. Chapter 24 describes how Ravi teased Pi for his attempt to follow multiple faiths.

Analysis
Chapter 23 is a deeply ironic commentary on the conflict between the ideals espoused by religion and their practices. They are all supposedly paths of love and paths to truth,...

Chapter 33:Summary
Pi shows the author photos from his past. The author notes that Pi is smiling in the photos taken since his rescue but that his eyes tell a different story. There are only four photos from India which Mamaji sent to Pi. None are of his family, and Pi can hardly remember what his mother looks like.

Analysis
The fact that a picture of Richard Parker is part of Pi's family memorabilia symbolizes the role animals play in Pi's identity.

Chapters 34-35:Summary
These chapters describe the efforts the Patel family went through as they tried to leave India. Chapter 34 is a comic review of...

Chapter 37:Summary
This chapter begins with a dramatic line: "The ship sank." After that event, Pi is in the lifeboat, screaming for Richard Parker to swim to the boat. Pi screams at heaven, throws first a life buoy, then an oar, to try to save Richard Parker, who finally makes it on board. In the chapter's last paragraph there is another telling line, "Truly I was to be the next goat."

Analysis
This chapter marks the beginning of Pi's tremendous ordeal, but also demonstrates how his mind works. In the lifeboat in the heat of the moment, Pi calls to heaven for explanations, always seeking divine meaning even in the midst of loss. He also tries to save...

Chapter 47:Summary
The next day, the zebra dies. That afternoon the hyena attacks Orange Juice. She fights back, but the hyena kills her and bites her head completely off. Pi looks away, and sees Richard Parker's head under the bench.

Analysis
The ecosystem aboard the lifeboat is being whittled away, becoming simplified, and reducing Pi's chances to hide. Soon he will have to be part of it.

Pi sees Orange Juice as a "simian Christ on the Cross" when she is killed. This indicates both his wish to think that suffering has meaning and his recognition that in some ways she did die to save him.

Chapter 58:Summary
Pi reads the survival manual included in the lifeboat's supplies and then makes further plans for survival, such as training Richard Parker, fishing, and improving his raft. He then falls into despair over his situation.

Analysis
Despite Pi's despair, this chapter demonstrates his embrace of his responsibility for keeping himself alive.

Chapters 59-60:Summary
Pi's hunger and thirst bring him out of his despair. He pulls his raft next to the lifeboat and retrieves rations, drinks rain water, and splashes his urine on the tarpaulin and locker lid to mark his territory. He then sets...

Chapters 68-69:Summary
Chapter 68 describes how Pi's sleeping patterns changed (he slept only at brief stretches) and how they differed from Richard Parker's (he slept for a long time). Chapter 69 describes the times Pi thought he saw a light in the distance and set off flares to attract the ship's attention.

Analysis
If the previous chapters had shown how animalistic Pi had become, these chapters show how great a distance there still is. Pi cannot sleep much because of his anxiety, and it may be false hope that makes him shoot off the flares. Richard Parker just accepts.

Chapters 78-79:Summary
In chapter 78, Pi describes the changing skies and seas he faces, but a castaway's gaze, he says, does not change; it is always a radius with the castaway at the center of the circle. His life as a castaway is a life of opposites, such as wishing to be wet when it is hot, but wishing to be dry when it is raining. Chapter 79 describes the many kinds of sharks that Pi sees, a number of which he catches for food. The first shark that Pi tries to catch is a large mako shark. He grabs it by the tail with his hand and pulls, but it jumps into the air and ends up in the lifeboat. The tiger and the shark fight. Richard Parker wins, but his paw is injured.

Chapter 88:Summary
The lifeboat runs into some floating trash, and Pi finds a rotted lamb in a floating refrigerator. He pulls a corked bottle from the trash, puts a message in it, and launches it in the water.

Analysis
Given Pi's powerful religious leanings, the lamb should be taken as symbolic. After becoming a killer as he has, Pi is no longer innocent (as a lamb), but rotten.

Chapter 89:Summary
Pi describes how everything suffered on the lifeboat from exposure to the weather, and how Pi and Richard Parker were slowing dying. His pens ran dry, ending his diary. His last entry is "I die."

Chapter 95:Summary
Told from the point of view of the author's persona, this chapter summarizes how Mr. Tomohiro Okamoto and Mr. Atsuro Chiba from the Japanese Ministry of Transport's Maritime Department make their way from California down to Tomatlán Mexico to interview Pi about the sinking of the Tsimtsum. They get lost because a poorly folded map causes them to read "Tomatán" as "Tomatlán." Chapters 96-99 are excerpts from the transcript of their conversation with Pi.

Analysis
The fact that these men drove over a thousand miles to get answers about why the Tsimtsum sank shows the intensity of the human need for meaning. The fact...